The format for this course will challenge the "deep grammar" of schooling. I have provided the structure for the course (syllabus), but we will all be doing the learning, collaboratively. As we proceed through the course, your interests may move us slightly off target as it is outlined in the syllabus. This is good! This course will model the kinds of things we might do in the 21st century classroom to challenge the "deep grammar" of what we know as schooling. Our learning will model the nature of 21st century literacies:
distributed expertise over centralized expertise
collective intelligence over individual possessive intelligence
collaboration over individual authorship
sharing over ownership
experimentation over normalization
innovation and evolution over stability and fixity
creative-innovative rule breaking over generic purity and policing
There are two essential questions that need to be addressed if teachers are to move effective technology use forward in our schools and classrooms:
What do we mean by the "21st century classroom?" There are a variety of answers to this question, but few get at the transformation in teaching and learning that can be brought about by the shifts that are happening in our world today.
How do we apply technology tools in ways so that we can more easily achieve meaningful teaching and learning in the 21st century? Our focus on technology in education rarely gets beyond the dimension of technical skill. Education professionals must have additional skills to be able to evaluate emerging and every-evolving technology tools and determine how they will meet the needs of the 21st century learner.
Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2007). New literacies: everyday practices & classroom learning (2nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.
What we have now in education: "thinking from the first mindset: schools, classrooms and literacy are the same as before, just now more technologized" (p. 55)
The "deep grammar" of schooling constructs learning as (1) teacher-centered and (2) "curricular." "This very construction is bound up with central tenants of the first (newcomer) mindset" (p. 56)
"First, schooling operates on the presumption that the teacher is the ultimate authority on matters of knowledge and learning. Hence, whatever is addressed and done, in the classroom must fall within the teacher's competence parameters, since he or she is to direct learning. Second, learning as "curricular" means that classroom learning proceeds in accordance with a formally imposed/officially sanctioned sequenced curriculum that is founded on texts as information sources."
"The ongoing agenda to technologize learning still encounters a teaching workforce that is largely un(der)prepared for the challenges of directing computer-mediated learning in the role of teacher as authority. That is, most teachers (let alone teacher educators) still lack insider-like experience and expertise with new technologies and contemporary social practices associated with their technical and social evolution as cultural tools and processes. Not surprisingly, teachers often look for ways of fitting new technologies into classroom "business as usual." Since educational ends are directed by curriculum, and technologies are often regarded by teachers as "mere" tools, the task of integrating new technologies into learning is often realized by adapting them to, or adding them onto, familiar routines. One largely reduced to teaching them how to "operate" the new technolgies. Beyond that, "operating" computers is then largely confined to learners doing with computers what they would previously have done with the conventional learning technologies of print and bookspace" (p. 56).
There are two essential questions that need to be addressed if teachers are to move effective technology use forward in our schools and classrooms:
Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2007). New literacies: everyday practices & classroom learning (2nd ed.). New York: Open University Press.
What we have now in education: "thinking from the first mindset: schools, classrooms and literacy are the same as before, just now more technologized" (p. 55)
The "deep grammar" of schooling constructs learning as (1) teacher-centered and (2) "curricular." "This very construction is bound up with central tenants of the first (newcomer) mindset" (p. 56)
"First, schooling operates on the presumption that the teacher is the ultimate authority on matters of knowledge and learning. Hence, whatever is addressed and done, in the classroom must fall within the teacher's competence parameters, since he or she is to direct learning. Second, learning as "curricular" means that classroom learning proceeds in accordance with a formally imposed/officially sanctioned sequenced curriculum that is founded on texts as information sources."
"The ongoing agenda to technologize learning still encounters a teaching workforce that is largely un(der)prepared for the challenges of directing computer-mediated learning in the role of teacher as authority. That is, most teachers (let alone teacher educators) still lack insider-like experience and expertise with new technologies and contemporary social practices associated with their technical and social evolution as cultural tools and processes. Not surprisingly, teachers often look for ways of fitting new technologies into classroom "business as usual." Since educational ends are directed by curriculum, and technologies are often regarded by teachers as "mere" tools, the task of integrating new technologies into learning is often realized by adapting them to, or adding them onto, familiar routines. One largely reduced to teaching them how to "operate" the new technolgies. Beyond that, "operating" computers is then largely confined to learners doing with computers what they would previously have done with the conventional learning technologies of print and bookspace" (p. 56).